ST. LOUIS -- Jury selection is set to begin in the murder-for-hire trial of Drew Peterson, the former suburban Chicago police officer accused of plotting to kill the prosecutor who put him behind bars in his third wife's death.

The process will start Friday in Randolph County in southern Illinois, where Peterson, 62, is serving a 38-year-sentence at the maximum security Menard Correctional Center. Opening arguments are scheduled to start Monday, with the trial anticipated to last at least one week.

The Illinois Attorney General's Office and the Randolph County state's attorney are prosecuting the case against Peterson, who faces a sentence of up to 60 years if convicted of solicitation of murder for hire along with solicitation of murder.

Peterson has pleaded not guilty to charges that he enlisted another inmate between September 2013 and December 2014 to help plan the death of Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, who is among the state's likely witnesses. Glasgow has previously declined to discuss the alleged threats.

The crux of the state's case is expected to consist of wiretapped conversations between Peterson and a confidential informant. Prosecutors have not identified a prospective hit man.

A public defender representing Peterson unsuccessfully sought to bar the secretly recorded conversations, arguing that the Will County judge who authorized the wiretap improperly met with the jailed informant, whose name was inadvertently disclosed during pretrial proceedings.

Even as he faces additional time in prison, Peterson is appealing his 2012 murder conviction to the Illinois Supreme Court.

Inmate Antonio Smith said he was playing basketball in the prison yard in October 2013 at Menard Correctional Center when Drew Peterson approached him for a favor.

"He said he needed me to have someone kill James Glasgow," Smith told jurors Monday at the Randolph County Courthouse.

The solicitation-for-murder case is the latest legal proceeding pitting Peterson against his nemesis, Glasgow, the Will County state's attorney who successfully prosecuted the former Bolingbrook police officer for the 2004 murder of Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio.

Glasgow testified Monday that he took the alleged threat against his life seriously and it upset his family. But Smith, who worked with authorities to record some of his conversations with Peterson, was the star prosecution witness. During its opening statement, the defense dismissed the recordings as nonsensical and mere prison talk.

The defense for Drew Peterson rested its case Friday after three inmates testified that the star witness in the murder-for-hire trial is an untruthful scam artist.

"He wasn't truthful," Jacob Bohannon said of Antonio "Beast" Smith, who wore a wire for authorities that allegedly captured Peterson's attempts to arrange a hit on his nemesis, Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow.

Bohannon was Smith's accomplice in the 2010 attempted murder of a woman whose home they were robbing and is serving a 25-year sentence in that case, as well as a 10-year sentence on an unrelated conviction for home invasion.

"Sometimes (Smith) tells the truth, most of the time he wouldn't," Bohannon testified in the tiny Randolph County Courthouse, located on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River a few minutes away from Menard Correctional Center, where Peterson, 62, is serving a 38-year sentence for the murder of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.[......]Closing arguments in the case are scheduled for Tuesday.

CHESTER, Ill. (WLS) -- A jury has found former suburban Chicago police officer Drew Peterson guilty of trying to hire an inmate's uncle to kill Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow.

The jury started deliberating at about 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, after closing arguments in the trial that started last week. They reached a verdict about an hour later, finding Peterson guilty of murder for hire and solicitation of murder.

Peterson is serving a 38-year sentence and faces up to 60 more years in prison.

SUN-TIMES MEDIA WIRE - Ex-cop and convicted wife killer Drew Peterson was sentenced Friday to another 40 years in prison for trying to arrange the murder of Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.

Peterson was convicted in May of attempting to hire a hitman to kill Glasgow, who led Peterson’s successful prosecution for the murder of Peterson’s wife, Kathleen Savio, in 2013.

While serving his 38-year sentence for Savio’s murder at Menard Correctional Center in downstate Chester, Peterson talked with a fellow inmate about hiring someone to take out Glasgow. The inmate, a member of the Satan’s Disciples street gang, helped investigators record Peterson talking about the litany of woes he believed Glasgow had inflicted on Peterson and his family— and an offer of $10,000

Within months of Drew Peterson's conviction for trying to have someone kill the prosecutor who put him behind bars, state prison officials were working to off-load the notorious ex-cop to federal authorities out of concern that he posed a danger to their agency.

Peterson, who was already serving a lengthy prison sentence for the murder of his third wife, was sentenced to another 40 years in July after a jury found he tried to hire someone to kill Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow.

By October, Illinois Department of Corrections officials began the process of moving Peterson from Menard Correctional Center in downstate Chester to federal custody.

"Offender Peterson is a threat to safety and security of the department and therefore an Interstate Corrections Compact Agreement transfer is being initiated by IDOC," the agency's acting manager, Doug Stephens, wrote in a letter to the agency's director, according to records obtained by the Tribune through an open records request.

"With his placement outside of Illinois Department of Corrections, it is imperative this offender be continually monitored through his mail as well as telephone conversations due to his former actions."

Last month, Peterson was transferred without fanfare to the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. At the time, IDOC officials declined to discuss the reason for his transfer. The documents obtained Thursday show the agency was concerned his actions in the murder-for-hire plot posed an ongoing safety and security threat.